Does Jacob Riis view "the other half" with compassion, criticism, or both? Give reasons from the source to support your answer. ARticle:

Long ago, it was said that “one half of the world does not know how the other half lives.” That was true then. The half that was on top did not know because it did not care. It didn’t care about the struggles and cared even less for what happened to those who were on the bottom. As long as the top half was able to hold them down and keep their own seat, they didn’t care.

There came a time when the discomfort and crowding on the bottom were too great. The upheavals were so violent that it was no longer easy to hold them down. Then, the upper half started to ask: what was the matter? Since then, information on the subject has been growing. The whole world has had its hands full, answering for its mistakes.

In New York, the boundary line of the other half lies through the tenements. Today, 3/4 of its people live in the tenements. The 19th century movement of the population to the cities is making them overcrowded. The 15,000 tenant houses from the past generation have grown to 37,000. They are not sanitary. Over 1,200,000 people call them home.

We know now that there is no way out. The “system” that was the evil offspring of public neglect and private greed has come to stay. It’s a storm-center forever of our civilization. The only option is to make the best of a bad situation.

What are the tenements, and how did they grow to what they are now? Taken from public records, the story is dark enough to send a chill to any heart. It may appear that the sufferings and the sins of the “other half” and the evil they breed are a fair punishment upon the community. It appears this way because that is the truth. The boundary line lies there. The forces for good on one side vastly outweigh the bad.

In the tenements, all the influences make for evil. They are the hotbeds of the epidemics that carry death to the rich and to the poor alike. They are nurseries of poverty and crime that fill our jails and police courts. They throw off $CuMof 40,000 humans to the island asylums and workhouses year by year. They turned out, in the last eight years, around half a million beggars to prey upon our charities. They maintain a standing army of 10,000 tramps with all that that implies. What are you going to do about it? This is the question of today. A band of defiant political cutthroats asked our city this question. There is a legitimate outgrowth of life on the tenement-house level. Law and order found the answer then and won. With our enormously swelling population held in this horrible bondage, will the city always give that answer? It will depend on how fully the city grasps the situation. Forty percent of the distress among the poor is due to drunkenness. But the first committee ever appointed to look at this issue went deeper and uncovered its roots. The conclusion was that certain conditions of life and living spaces go with certain habits and morals. It recommended the prevention of drunkenness by providing every man a clean and comfortable home.

The greed of money that created this evil must undo itself. That is, as far as it can now be undone after this much damage has been done. Homes must be built for the working people by those who hire them.

If this is true from a purely economic point of view, what about the outlook from the Christian standpoint? Not long ago, a great meeting was held in this city. There were all denominations of religious faith. They discussed the question of how to influence these tenement masses with Christianity. They are too often strangers to Christian influence. A Brooklyn builder gave a hint worth heeding: “How shall the love of God be understood by those who have been only nurtured by the greed of man?”

[Source: Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1890).]